The Age of Innocence

Literary fiction · Satire · Tragedy

First published: 1920
Print length: 524 pagesW.W. Norton, 2003

Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, 1921

Description

In the carefully regulated world of 1870s upper-class New York, lawyer Newland Archer looks forward to marrying the sheltered May Welland and taking his expected place in society. Then May’s cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska, returns from Europe after leaving a disastrous marriage. Her candor and disregard for convention fascinate Newland even as her wish for a divorce alarms both families and pushes him into defending the rules she challenges. His growing attraction to Ellen exposes the distance between his private desires and the respectable future he has chosen. Through an impending marriage threatened by scandal, the novel examines how impeccable manners preserve social power—and how demands for freedom can unsettle an entire community without easily overcoming it.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Descriptive · Ornate · Witty

Pace

Measured

Tone

Melancholic · Reflective · Satirical · Wistful

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Ideas · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 4 / 5
Ideas: 4 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

ClassFreedomGenderLoveMarriageMorality

About Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton was an American novelist and story writer whose fiction combines exact social observation with a designer’s attention to rooms, houses, and landscapes. Drawing on her knowledge of upper-class New York, she traced how manners, money, and reputation govern private choices. Her society novels often proceed through small hesitations and compromised appearances that gradually close around a character. In The House of Mirth, Lily Bart’s debts and resistance to a calculating marriage market give her circle increasing power over her. The Age of Innocence uses witty, ornate description to reveal the coercion concealed within impeccable conduct, placing Newland Archer’s desires against the respectable future already arranged for him. Wharton could also work in a starker register. Ethan Frome turns backward from an outsider’s inquiry to an isolated household where poverty and obligation limit every avenue of escape. Its spare prose and frozen setting make the landscape part of the narrative pressure. Whether writing social satire, rural tragedy, or ghost stories, Wharton repeatedly examined confinement and the difficult, often costly pursuit of freedom.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: W.W. Norton
Language: English
ISBN: 9780393967944

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.